Anonymous Hackers Target UK Government

Members of Anonymous have targeted several government Web sites in the UK to show support for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

"After urging the United Kingdom government to allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to go to Ecuador -- the country which recently granted him asylum -- Anonymous has started taking action," writes Softpedia's Eduard Kovacs.

"The loosely knit hacktivist group claims to have launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against the U.K. Justice Department, as well as the British prime minister's Number 10 Web site and the Department of Work and Pension," writes CNET News' Steven Musil. "Anonymous has dubbed the attack campaign as #OpFreeAssange on its Twitter feeds."

"The Ministry of Justice confirmed the attack, but said that no material, sensitive or otherwise, had been taken," writes The Inquirer's Dave Neal. "'The Ministry of Justice website was the subject of an online attack last night at around 20:00 hours. This is a public information website and no sensitive data is held on it. No other Ministry of Justice systems have been affected,' said a spokesperson."

"All this activity is unlikely to change the government's attitude to Julian Assange, however," writes The Register's Iain Thomson. "The police cordon around the Ecuadorian embassy is still in place and everyone going in and out is being checked."